Plans to relax the laws on assisted suicide have been thrown into doubt after
a group of lawyers questioned the role of Lord Phillips of Worth Matravers,
Britain’s most senior judge.

New advice for prosecutors, to be published on Wednesday, is expected to say that relatives of those who kill themselves will not be prosecuted as long as they do not “encourage” them and assist only a “clear and settled intention”.

The new guidance was drawn up by the Crown Prosecution Service after Lord Phillips, with four other Law Lords, backed a call by Debbie Purdy, a multiple sclerosis sufferer, for a policy statement from the CPS on assisted suicide at the end of July.

However, lawyers from campaign group the Christian Legal Centre want the advice to be put on hold because of Lord Phillips’ personal sympathy those calling for the rules on assisted suicide to be realxed, which emerged weeks after the judgement was handed down.

In an interview with The Daily Telegraph’s columnist Mary Riddell on Sept 11, Lord Phillips said he felt “enormous sympathy” for terminally ill patients who wanted to end their own lives in assisted suicides.

He added that he sympathised with people facing a “quite hideous termination of their life” as a result of “horrible diseases” who wanted to avoid a prolonged death and spare their relatives pain or distress.

The campaigners claimed that these remarks showed that Lord Phillips had allowed his personal views to colour his judgement in the Purdy case - which overturned two early decisions by more junior courts - as the country’s senior Law Lord.

They are now calling for the Purdy case to be reviewed by Britain’s new Supreme Court, of which Lord Phillips is president, and are threatening to take the case to the European Court of Human Rights.

Andrea Williams, a director of the centre, said: “It is inappropriate for a judge to participate in a case in which he has strong views. It [the interview] raises serious questions over impartiality with regard to Lord Phillips.

“Justice must be seen to be done. He [Lord Phillips] should be showing a clear lack of impartiality. These are fundamental issues that affect life. They are a matter of life and death.”

In a letter to Keir Starmer, the director of public prosecutions, the campaigners said: “In the light of Lord Phillips’s reported statements we are concerned that the Judgment delivered by him on 30th July may have involved actual or apparent bias, having been coloured by his personal view of the issue underlying Ms Purdy’s Appeal, namely, assisted suicide.

“We therefore propose, as a matter of urgency, to seek legal opinion as to the integrity of the Judgment and as to whether an Appeal against it might be made to the European Court of Human Rights under the terms of Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights.”

The group claim a precedent was set when a House of Lords’ judgement on whether the late General Augusto Pinochet of Chile was immune from prosecution was set aside because Lord Hoffman, one of the Law Lords, had links to Amnesty International.

A CPS spokesman said: “We have received some correspondence in relation to the publication of the guidance and we will be respond in due course.”

A UK Supreme court spokesman said: “Lord Phillips has not called for a change in the law. In an interview he gave after the judgment was handed down he simply expressed sympathy with anyone who was considering ending their life because they had a terminal illness. He made it clear that this was his personal view."

The Law Lords, led by Lord Phillips, had required Mr Starmer "to prepare an offence-specific policy identifying the facts and circumstances which he will take into account in deciding, in a case such as Ms Purdy’s, whether or not to consent to a prosecution".

The spokesman added: "At present, there is simply not sufficiently clear or relevant guidance available as to how the discretion given to the Director is to be exercised.

"In a highly unusual and extremely sensitive case of this kind, the Code for Crown Prosecutors offers almost no guidance at all. A custom-built policy statement is required."